Health & Happiness

5 Things I Would Tell My New-Mom Self

You know how you look back on your life as a, say middle schooler or high schooler, and you think about how serious you thought things were, and you shake your head a little at how absurd those “serious” things were?  

Like standing in a bikini in front of a full-length mirror, turned to the side, and squishing your face up at the sight of the soft pooch in the belly area?

Or throwing yourself across your gingham bedspread-covered bed, in a fit of tears because the boy you liked found out you liked him, but didn’t like you back, because he liked your best friend, and the three of you lived in the same neighborhood and rode the same school bus, so you’d have to look them both in the eye the next day, and you just wanted to disappear?

Don’t you ever want to sneak back to those days and whisper a little something to that person?

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Why Today You Will Put On Your Sensible Panties

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Hey, momma.

Yes, you.  You with the crispy hair from too many days of dry shampoo.  

You with the stack of mail you’ve promised to sort through for at least two weeks.  

You over there saying a little prayer that your kid doesn’t get salmonella from the slightly expired eggs you fed him this morning (cooked in the microwave, of course, and eaten on the way to school, as if that needed to be said).  

You with the screaming toddler in the checkout line at Target, beads of sweat dripping down the back of your neck, while people give you their judgy side-glances for not controlling your child better.

You with the soft bags under your eyes from staying up too late last night, just so you could savor a few delicious minutes of alone time.

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I'm Afraid This Was Caused By Old Eggs

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Have I ever told you how we decided to have another kid?  

The truth is, I always wanted a house full of children until my youngest was born and I realized I could barely manage keeping two children alive, much less a throng of them.

Mark was perfectly fine just having one kid.  

I tried for years to get him on board, but our first-born wasn’t an easy infant.  He had colic, but not the kind that people claim to have when their baby is just an asshole and cries a lot. 

The Real Reason I'm Writing Today

Last week my old friends, Ami and Jackie, who started out as work colleagues nearly 18 years ago, but became so much more than that over time, came down to Austin from Dallas for a work visit and squeezed me in for dinner.  

They asked me why I don’t email anymore, and I told them it’s because I don’t want to bug people, to which Jackie responded, “Would you rather be forgotten?  If people don’t want to read your emails, they can hit the delete button.”

The thought of being forgotten is what got me.  

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My Birthday Wish

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The story is that your birthday wish won’t come true if you share it.  But I’m feeling frisky, so I’m throwing caution to the wind.

Hopefully, by sharing, I’m not changing the course of my life’s direction, which is something I’ve worried about before:  when I got my driver's license renewed one year and checked the box labeled “Organ Donor,” and I stepped outside the DMV, I was suddenly paralyzed with fear, worried that I’d just set in motion a new purpose for my life - to be the body parts for someone else’s.  

The 4 Things I Learned From Taking a Break

You know how I recently took a hiatus from writing, right?

It wasn’t planned, and I mentally flogged myself daily during the nine months I was away from the keyboard, telling myself I was throwing away the following I’d worked so hard to build, and then mentally arguing back that, “yah, but what’s the point?”, and then mentally consoling myself, saying, “hey, there are always people who tell me how meaningful my posts are to them, so just keep on keepin' on, gurl!”, but then mentally belittling myself with, “I could poop out a basket full of Japanese howler monkeys before anyone would pay attention.”

Conservative Christianism, Anxious Sweats, & Feeling "Less Than"

As usual when I’m heading someplace important, especially if I’m right on schedule - or more likely, late - as opposed to being early and relaxed, which hasn’t happened since before I had children and has somehow become a habit, just like writing run-on sentences, I start sweating and my freshly flat-ironed hair starts to pop into the most pubic and freakish curls around my hairline.

Back By Popular Demand

Oh heeeyyy!  I realize it’s been a little longer than a minute since you last heard from me.  

I’ve been on a nine-month, unplanned hiatus during which I pretty much gave up my entire life in service of others (I’m disgustingly selfless), got my oldest son graduated and moved off to college, moved our family to a new home in a new town, planned a once-in-a-lifetime family vacation in celebration of The Graduate, and find myself now pale with dark under-eye circles, greasy meth hair, dressed like I lost a bet, and almost completely unraveled.  

Small Steps to Big Change: My Interview with Carla Birnberg

Back in November I attended the Texas Conference for Women and I had the greatest pleasure of meeting and interviewing Carla Birnberg, author of Mizfit and What You Can When You Can, the latter creating its very own movement on social media through the hashtag #wycwyc. 

I was excited about the opportunity to talk with Carla because What You Can When You Can was perfectly written as if it were just for me.  It might as well have been handwritten on spiral notebook paper, folded into a paper football, and signed, “Lylas.”

This Year Has To Be Different

Y’all.  I’m just so freaking behind.  I feel like in 2016 - while it was a great year for me personally, and I met a few really important goals - there were some hard things, too, and I fell behind on a lot of stuff, and basically just let my house and myself go.  

My house right now looks like one of those you’d see in the TV show, "Hoarders," with newspapers and boxes piled to the ceiling and when the UPS guy comes to my door with my daily Amazon delivery, I answer it wearing my duster and slippers, my hair in pink foam curlers, with a cigarette hanging out the side of my mouth and I don't even smoke.  

I’m tired of it.  This year has to be different.  

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Dirty Laundry, Doing Less, and Idiots' Guides

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Not to air out my medical dirty laundry, but I have a mental condition that you may have heard of:  I have ADHD.  I haven’t been diagnosed by a doctor, but trust me: it’s obvious.

I fill my days with all the hundreds of things I want and need to do, trying to cram it all in, rushing around to keep the house together, letting dogs in and out and in and out and in and out, writing words for this very blog, with the hope of making other moms realize we’re all dealing with the same B.S., and that, yes, they are “doing it right,” whatever that means, and that it’s totally okay that their kids think their name is “Ja-Co-Li-Coo-Dammit!” because - by the end of the day, our brains are just piles of slop.  

Thank goodness for tomorrow. 

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Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

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A week or so ago, a young man that goes to my son’s high school was arrested for graffitiing a terroristic threat on the school’s bathroom wall.  I texted a picture of the kid’s mug shot to my son and asked if he knew him, and he said that, yes, he did - that they even worked together, and that he’d given him a ride home from work a time or two, and that he’d told me about him several times.

I’ll tell you what irritates me more than the itch of a growing-out bikini area, it's finding out my son’s been talking to me, and I haven’t been listening.

I immediately searched all the local news media posts about the arrest, not just to fulfill my need for juicy gossip (but that, too), but also because - now that I was paying attention - I realized how close to home it hits:  the guy's being my son’s age, going to the same school, working at the same place, and **gulp** riding in my son’s car.  

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I'm Struggling Here, But I Guess It Could Be Worse

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I promised my youngest last night that we’d go for a jog this morning, and I immediately regretted making that promise when I woke up because I had a screaming headache.  Since I get them almost daily, I figure I might as well plug on through.  I’d never get out of bed if I waited till I was headache-free*.  Besides, I'm trying to be a role model of health and responsibility to my kid.

We’ve been thinking of cancelling our gym membership because we’ve been paying for a family membership for years, and we suddenly realized:  that gym doesn’t freaking work.  

We’re still not healthy, and we’ve paid that place thousands of dollars. 

A String of Disappointments, and I'm Still Here

Several months ago I posted about an upcoming event called "Listen To Your Mother," a live event where authors read their work on stage in front of a live studio audience.  I asked my subscribers to vote on which of my most popular articles I should use in my audition.  

I was a little nervous auditioning, but I was pretty sure I’d get in.  

I'm not bad looking, and I don't mean to brag...

I’m not bad looking.  Let's get that out of the way at the very start. 

Not to sound all braggy, but I’ve got a mouthful of straight teeth (and I never had braces!), tiny ankles, and naturally thick, healthy nails.  I only recently started seeing a few gray hairs, and I have cute little Fred Flintstone feet.

But I’m embarrassed to say that I stepped on the scale this morning and I’m exactly 100 pounds heavier than the day I graduated high school.  

I'm going to let that sink in for a sec.

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Back to School: How the 504 May Be Keeping Your Kid From Adulting

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Back to School: How the 504 May Be Keeping Your Kid From Adulting

Let me start by first saying that the title of this post is not meant to discourage you from putting a 504 Plan into place for your child. In fact, we have one in place for our son.

The purpose of this post is to help parents understand “the system” and become aware that these services exist.

But also to make sure you & your child understand what the Plan’s purpose is: to give them equal access to an education, and what its purpose is not: to give them less work or to get them out of certain classes or assignments. Although the accommodations might cut their work load down or allow them out of certain classes or assignments.

It can be confusing.

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The Good News Is, My Foot Still Fits In My Mouth

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If you've followed my blog for any length of time, or if you've read my book, you know that the battle between me and my mouth is very real.  

From cliche's, which I slaughter to pieces like some sort of harebrained butcher, to awkward small-talk exchanges that are so heavily wrapped in social anxiety, I invariably say something that earns me a furrowed brow and a silent look of confusion.

And sometimes I just get my words all jumbled up.  

We went to Florida last week for a family vacation, and on the way there, I pondered whether I'd fit in my swimsuits or not (I did, but only the super-stretchy ones.)  

I didn't wonder whether my foot fit in my mouth.  But, alas, it does.

Murder-Suicide? Or Just Avoiding The Phone?

Running around this morning, unloading the dishwasher from last night, tossing dirty socks into the laundry basket, then picking up throw pillows from the floor, which is where they spend 97% of their time, because my children are trying to kill me, so they intentionally take them off the couch and toss them to the floor on the daily, I thought to myself, "I wonder how Mom and Dad are doing?"

It's been a while since I've heard from them.  

Not that I ever hear from them.  We only talk if I initiate the call.  And when I say "call," I'm referring only to my dad.  My mom doesn't talk on the phone.  If I want to have a conversation with her, it's almost always through texts, which is pretty funny when you know the back story.

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It's A Good Day To Be Alive

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My inner dialog this morning as I stretched myself awake:  "Hooray!  It's a school holiday, so no early rush to get lunches made!"

Followed immediately by:  "Booo, it's a school holiday, so the kids will be home with me all day." (don't judge me)

Then, "Hooray!  It's Friday, so we can sleep in the next two days!"

Followed by, "Booo, I have a dentist's appointment this morning."

I'd been awake for 25 seconds and I'd already been taken on an emotional roller coaster ride.  

I trudged downstairs to make my beloved coffee, then went back up to get ready for my day.  I reached for my contact solution, tipped the bottle over, and poured my perfectly-brewed cup of coffee over my unsuspecting contact lens.

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5 Songs I Will Love & Sing Forever

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A few months ago, I got a new car and I feel a little silly saying it, but my favorite thing is the trial account of XM Satellite.  The best channels are 80's on 8 and 90's on 9, and I toggle between the two stations losing myself in the memories the songs from those decades brings back.

I'm sharing a handful of songs here that I'll love and sing forever.  These aren't in any particular order, because I love them all for very different reasons.  Enjoy!

Kristan Braziel LeBaron.jpg

Kristan (Braziel) LeBaron is an author, writer, marketing professional, and the voice of the blog, Bring Mommy A Martini. Mom to two hilarious boys: one in college and the other in middle school, she writes “real mom” stories on life with anxiety & depression, and choosing happiness as a daily practice. She lives outside of Austin with her two sons and two lavishly kept dogs.

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